Writing About Thinking About Things

Tag Archives: poly

I recently watched an old Dan Savage video where he answers the question “do threesomes ruin relationships?”. He answered that if there is a problem or some kind of lack in a relationship then adding another person into it for a charged sexual liason might very well ruin a relationship, but successful threesomes happen as well. It’s just that you don’t hear about the successful ones. The people having successful threesomes are not running around telling their friends and family about their hot three-way over dinner; they are not “out” about it.

Over the course of the last year, certain features of my life have enabled me to have regular fulfilling sex – including group sex – in the context of varied yet stable and emotionally fulfilling relationships. These features include being bi, being poly, having good communication skills to establish consent, having bi poly friends and places to hang out together. Safe sex is a top priority, as is consent, as is communicating openly about needs and preferences. If someone finds a new partner, this news is greeted with joy and maintaining other relationships and activities outside of this friendship group is also a priority.

The nature of this sexual contact is such that we find ourselves talking about being happy, being fulfilled, finding positive effects on our mental health and overall wellbeing.

Personally, I have been on a deliberate journey to make sex as positive an experience as possible due to starting from very negative beginnings. The success of this journey is a source of happiness and pride for me.

In the context of the wider world it seems clear that the more sex is talked about with children and young people in an open and honest manner the better their subsequent choices are and the more healthy they can be. Sex can and should be a topic of conversation that is as normal and natural as one’s other activities and hobbies.

As an activist, I would like to be ‘out’, especially about the benefits of group sex, which I have spoken about before. But when I imagined going in to work and someone asking me about my weekend and my reply being that I had a birthday party that involved a select guest list of comfortable friends and we all had amazing sex, I couldn’t see that being taken as an acceptable detail of conversation, even though I’m out to my colleagues in every way I can think of.

I have someone in my life who takes great pains and great pleasure in pointing out that I don’t know what the boundaries are of “normal” conversation and regularly go too far with what I’m willing to say. I find it emotionally draining to trigger someone else’s sense of discomfort (much more so than dealing with my own), even though in most cases of people being ‘out’, it is very much to the greater good that people are exposed to things so that they start to perceive them as normal, or everyday.

It is to everyone’s benefit if we can talk openly about sex (including lack of it), but the social pressure in the UK that bears down upon anyone who wants to start the conversation is weighty indeed.

One of the first comments one hears when one is discussing polyamory is something along the lines of “so, it’s just a way to have more sex” which of course, it isn’t. Polyamory is about maintaining the personal skills of emotional honesty and non-judgemental, effective and timely communication in order to be able to build multiple relationships with other human beings. The idea of “more sex” is a relative concept that is entirely useless and was surely only invented for marketing purposes.

Implicit in the “more sex” (or “lots of sex”) comment is the judgement that wanting to have more sex is in some way an undesirable or negative goal to have. Which is isn’t.

Sex feels nice and pleasure is good for you – The Ethical Slut

However, since we’re on the topic, polyamory is in some ways all about sex, because it is an alternative to monogamy and monogamy is all about sex.

There are differences between a romantic relationship and other kinds of relationship, such as with friends and family members. Monogamy comes with an elaborate set of rules and of course, you can only have one person in a romantic monogamous relationship. But the ultimate way to tell if someone is in a romantic relationship with you, is married to you, or is faithful to you is if they have sex only with you. Despite acknowledging that other kinds of fidelity are desirable, for example emotional fidelity, it is only the sex thing that has instant power to change a relationship within monogamy.

Since polyamory typically involves the removal of sexual activity as the ultimate marker of fidelity, instead using more personal and fluid ideas of how to maintain security and happy feelings between people who are emotionally involved with each other, polyamory is all about the sex.

This is a testament to My So Amazing Life and is not even a #firstworldproblem or a #middleclassproblem rather a #mylifeistooawesome problem or #poorlittlepolygirlhastoomanysexpartners kind of problem but STILL it has become a fact of my life that group sex is easier, happier, simpler and freer than traditional one-on-one sex.

My friends in the bi-poly world tend to agree. We’ve all been in situation whereby we know the people around us are all 1)bi 2)non-monogamous 3)actively practicing safe sex and due to feeling safe, happy & fuzzy, some chatting has turned into cuddling has turned into kissing has turned into fondling has turned into sex with more than one other person. I call situations like this (parties, conferences) ‘euphoric’ spaces, because something about the safety and large numbers of people feeling friendly towards each other can build a sense of giddy abandon. In ‘euphoric’ spaces it seems easier to have sexual interactions with people, to do sexual activities you might not otherwise do and do these things with people you might not otherwise do it with. Within group sex situations, things are easier to do because there is less pressure to perform, individual acts have less overall meaning, experimentation is the only option and there is a sense that anything is worth trying and anything that feels good is a bonus. There are also simply ‘more’ body parts to play with and more minds creatively attacking the problem, if you’ll excuse my phrasing.

It’s really rather lovely.

Now we come to my (not really a) problem. I have lately been thinking of the etiquette of seeing the people you have been ‘euphoric’ with outside of those spaces. The first instance is fine, you all had sex when high on hormones at a party and now you’re not so interested in each other. But what happens when another ‘euphoric’ space comes around? Is it ok to have sex with someone again in a euphoric space when you wouldn’t normally? Does it sort of imply, “I only fancy you in a heightened state, but when we’re on our own together you turn me off” ? In poly circles it’s traditional to just have a chat about it, and if everyone is ok with it, then it’s fine.

But sometimes getting to know the person actually turns you off them as a person and so you wouldn’t want to be in a sexual relationship with them, you also can’t really find common ground to ‘have a chat’ but when you’re in a euphoric space, all you can think of is the lust and it’s tempting to chuck away the knowledge that you don’t like them that much and dive on in. Is such a course of action duplicitous? Callous? To be avoided? Is this monogamy ethics, within which one is supposed to both fancy, love and be a friend to your only partner, but which does not necessarily apply in poly?

It still feels wrong, but am I overthinking this?

It seems I’m one of the only people in my friendship group to be wondering about these things. They believe you should follow your positive feelings in the moment and it is unlikely to create problems. If problems do arise, we’re all poly, we can talk about it. Nonetheless, for me it seems a bit too laissez-faire considering we’re normally so good at looking after people’s feelings, particularly when tied in with other thoughts I’ve had about dominant type people and submissive type people (and I’m not talking about kink, here).

Myself and my friend term these people ‘carers’ and ‘chargers’. ‘Carers’ are people who naturally incline towards accommodating other people’s needs before looking after their own. ‘Chargers’ are people who go forth into the world, doing their own thing and even though they ask if everyone else is ok with their actions, they don’t know they have carers in their life who don’t speak up for their own needs. Chargers can trample other people with no idea they’re doing it. I am certainly a charger who was once with a carer. In a broader sense, there are people who are less able to communicate their needs or desires and the more loud, confident people need to take care to create a space (which could take time and lots of shutting up) so that the less loud people can express themselves. I feel that charging into euphoric spaces might lead to quieter folks developing crushes or stronger feelings for people who do not return the affection. Those quieter folks with the crushes might wait until the next euphoric space to be with their crush, and rationalise that they enjoy what they can get, but surely an unspoken desire where the object of affection has no idea of the feelings involved is bad for everybody.

All of that was just an aside to another non-problem I’m having right now. I’ve noticed that I have ups and downs with individuals in my life, both in terms of relationships and in terms of sexual problems, which is to be expected, however I sometimes find myself in potential group sex situations with these same people and I find (I think) that I’m perfectly happy to be in these situations with the individuals. I’m happy to see them having sex, I think I’m even happy to have sex with them. Even if the problem between me and them is about sex. Again, it’s something about the dilution of individual elements into a greater whole. Personal problems seem small and far away when in a group of people who just want to touch each other in pleasant ways. (It kinda goes without saying that, as a poly with a few year’s experience, I don’t really have many feelings of jealousy and I do have big feelings of pleasure when I see my partners having fun with other people.) This is not to say that I haven’t also felt uncomfortable in group sexual spaces, but I’m very happy to leave such situations to look after my own feelings, and it’s normally my own vague discomfort rather than raging jealousy or sadness. In general, group sex is an extremely positive experience.

I really don’t know how to navigate this at all. This was not in the handbook of life. Shall I, more or less, avoid these euphoric spaces when I have problems with individuals so that I don’t put the problems constantly on the back burner? Shall I make sure all problems are sorted before something like this happens, and withdraw from these spaces if there are unsettled issues? Or shall I go with my feelings, engage in a happy way with these spaces, and perhaps, in the best possible of instances, use these euphoric spaces as a way to heal problems, with myself and with individuals? If the problem is about sex, then having positive sexual experiences in a less high stakes context might be an excellent way to move forward.

(Indeed, just to get hippie for a moment, I think the absence of group sex in mono/Christian cultures might go some way to explain the pathology our society seems to exhibit at the moment. I wonder how easy it would be to decide to cut people’s benefits if the deciding person was regularly in a room of 100 bodies all having sex together.)

I don’t know the answer to these questions. All I know for now is that group sex can be easier and happier than couple sex, and that fact is complicating my decision-making process considerably!

Lately I’ve been told to consider “mood hacking” – using various techniques to boost one’s mood (application of music, for example). My premenstrual answer is chocolate raisins in bed.

And now I feel sick.

I love beards.

Want to smoke a cigarette.

It’s a full moon.

Something is going wrong between me and This Boy. I am premenstrual. What is different about our exchanges? I am feeling more hurt by things he says/ hurt at all when I might not have been before. Am I slower to catch and hold back the emotional reaction (in most cases deserved, because the emotion is irrational, but maybe not all)? Are we communicating more things that can provoke negative emotional responses? For example, am I speaking differently? I feel I am saying things with less… censorship…and forethought… with two results: saying things I wouldn’t normally say, things that have emotional content that other, censoring emotions prevent from being said (eg shame or fear) and saying things in an awkward fashion because of lack of “inner editor” corrections. I can see the benefits of both of these. It forces me to address things I am uncomfortable with but afraid of saying. Lack of inner editor corrections can help me express more freely/accurately what is happening in my hind brain. Of course, there are also consequences, such as risking hurting people with poorly phrased sentiments and raising things the other party is also unwilling to talk about.

BUT it is particularly bad to do these things with This Boy. He is unsympathetic to negative emotional states (believing you should “mood hack” your way out of them), is critical of poorly thought out arguments, actively practices “rationality” in his thought processes, (making his strictly logical responses difficult to deal with when in an emotional space), masks his own emotional responses and implicitly makes one feel bad for not being the way he is. This is expressed in his desire that if you are not willing to “mood hack” you do not deserve his attention or to be in his space.

To feel you are dropping in someone’s estimation and getting less worthy of someone’s time at the moment of becoming more emotionally vulnerable feels like a pretty deep stab to the heart.

Of course, struggling to not be in a strange emotional place when premenstrual is something I have railed against as impossibly difficult, not worth it and actually results in the opposite effect happening anyway. The best solution would be to take myself off, but I am currently (stupidly?) dependent on others for my shelter. Any good poly will tell you dependencies are bad, nay, death to healthy relationships.

I need somewhere else to go, or some effective coping strategies (a mental somewhere else to go) or something. Ask for tolerance and help? Maybe, but it seems like asking someone to “change” their essential nature, and didn’t seem to work last time anyway. I might bury myself in books but perhaps I should be checking out coach tickets…

There is sometimes a desire within polyamory to define types of relationships. Monogamous definitions fall flat because there are lots of assumptions around who one can have sex with or spend time with or be committed to that don’t work for polyamory.

There seems to me to be certain aspects of relationships that need including when defining relationships with others:

person I have sex with

person who I have strong feelings for

person I invest in

These things overlap in different ways for different individuals in our life. For example: you might have a friend who you have sex with, who you have strong feelings for but which does not extend to romance and you spend some investment on them, eg trying to see them regularly but not being too bothered if that fails from time to time. There might be someone else who you invest lots of time into, eg an ex lover who parents your child, but you do not have sex with them and your feelings have waned for the person. You might have a lover who you have sex with but have little feelings/attachment to and invest little time in them. Words like “friend”, “ex” and “boyfriend” really don’t cut it in these scenarios.

So, many poly people have relationships in their lives that are clearly more (or less) important than others, and that is as it should be, since a “fuck buddy” need not have as much importance (nor would desire as much importance) as a parent of one’s child.

In this post I am going to talk about the desire to label more important relationships as ‘primary’ and less important relationships as ‘secondary’. Let us leave aside our irritation for the implied hierarchy in these words, accepting that they are just words (which are always inadequate) and not judgements.

It occurs to me that it is easier to know which relationships are less important, or secondary – fuck buddies, friends you rarely see any more, distant extended family, the corner shop man you flirt with – are all easy to peg as secondary to more important relationships, whether there is sexual content or not.

So, for the most part in this post I will talk about primaries.

To return to the list of things that need definition in relationships, a ‘primary’ would often (not always, but often) have all three elements of sex, emotion and investment, none of which are uncomplicated. However, I will focus on ‘investment’ since even conventional relationship training in monogamous/western societies allows for the idea of sexual feeling and emotional content waxing and waning which can, hopefully, be greeted without undue alarm.

In a definition of primary I recently read, there were included two notions that seem related to investment: that of spending time and that of making plans. The author argued that a primary partner deserves investments of time and is a person with whom to make future plans. They simultaneously expected those things in return from their partner(s) and if the partner was unwilling to return these investments, then that relationship could not be called ‘primary’.

I find these notions perfectly reasonable and yet intensely problematic.

In some ways it is obvious that one would spend more time with a primary partner than a secondary partner, however there seems to be many scenarios when that notion must be suspended. For example if distance becomes a factor, such as a partner living in another country, ‘time spent’ would reduce to zero. I would also allow for the idea that if a primary starts a new relationship, then the fire, excitement and obsession phase (often called New Relationship Energy or NRE in poly circles) might require spending much less time with that primary so that they have room (and time!) to explore the new person. These are just two examples that could happen more than once over a long relationship. During these periods of “less time spent” is the partner no longer primary?

The notion of ‘making plans’ has a more personal flavour for me. I’m at a time in my life where very serious life plans, such as having children, are not really on the cards. I see other ‘serious’ plans, such as cohabitation or moving country as less serious because I believe in maximum flexibility and maintaining possibility of change. I would happily co-habit on a whim, but would never, for example, sign a tenancy contract that made me solely liable for a year’s rent, on the trust that my partner will pay it to me and not run off part of the way through.

This may be what the desire for ‘primary’ partner future plans are: the ability to believe (trust?) in a shared future. However, so much of what draws me to polyamory is the notion that we can be stable, secure, self-sufficient individuals, and we strive to be those things to enable maximum pleasures with maximum people. If there are dependencies, such as financial, marital or simply promissory, these potentially lock people into relationships that they may in the future not want to be in. Dependencies close down opportunities for change. They limit freedoms.

I think the majority of future plans don’t require dependencies: financial contracts, in particular, can always have more than one name on them. Even a marital contract can be negotiated without dependency: my brother recently decided to marry his boyfriend to improve their options for visas, and part of their explicit agreement with the contract was that, if things start to not work, they can always get divorced.

With regards to emotional dependencies, one might argue it is harder to make future plans. What if a primary desired you to move country in order to be with them? The change to your life would be a large one, it is definitely a ‘serious’ future plan. In that scenario I would agree to move if it was feasible in my own life (ie I have nothing better to do/there are no conflicts) but as a person who believes in self-sufficiency and freedom, for myself and others, I would also only agree to move if I was emotionally prepared for the fact the inviting lover might decide after a week that they no longer want to be in a relationship with me. I should feel quite happy about being there without them. If I were emotionally dependent on that person, and my entire self worth/reason for moving was wrapped up in their continued relationship with me, then freedoms for us both are lost, and both are putting the other in a vulnerable position.

Some might argue that being emotionally independent all the time is too difficult, or closes down opportunities. Yes, it might be difficult, but asking a person to include you in their future plans, as a ‘primary’, to attempt to relieve your insecurity about the future (and in so doing leave your dependencies unexamined) is surely more dangerous in the long run. One can even apply this idea to children. It is far better to allow for, plan for, the scenario that at the moment of the birth of your child, your partner runs screaming from the room never to be seen again. And more than this: allow for the idea that if they did that, you would still love them. Or, that action is okay with you. If that action is not ok, then you have no business making a new person together. This, in my opinion, is the best way to guarantee freedoms and indeed for the relationship to be as long as it can be, and happy throughout its longevity.

My boyfriend and I once rented a flat that at the start we were unsure of taking. We were attracted by the contract style: it was a contract initially of six months and became “rolling” after that, whereby both ourselves and the landlord had to give one month’s notice of departure before moving out. There was a risk that our landlord could make us lose our home with just a small amount of notice, but it also meant that we could leave at any time. As I said, we were unsure how long wanted to be in the flat.

We lived there happily for over four years.

It seems to me that future plans are best done without emotional or financial dependencies and these can be done (presumably) with any partner, regardless of the longevity or intensity of the relationship because there is always implicit freedom (changeability) built into the plans. ‘Time spent’ is broadly allocated to some partners more than others but this may not apply to the most important relationships that we have due to various factors. This makes the use of the word ‘primary’ an unnecessarily confusing one.

What other motivations are there for using the word ‘primary’? In terms of emergency decisions, it might be useful. If a secondary knows in advance their status, then there are few hurt feelings when a secondary partner’s date is brushed off due to a primary partner’s emergency. But for the most part emergency decisions come up rarely.

If a person is desiring to be called ‘primary’ because they want to be sure of their place in another’s affection, then it sounds to me like a “I want to feel special: what about me?” kind of argument, and everyone knows how I feel about those.